by LETO, JULIE
Praise for TRUE ROMANCE
“What better way is there to prove romance really exists than to read these books?”
—Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author
“Memoir meets romance! In the twenty years I’ve been penning romances, this is one of the most novel and exciting ideas I’ve encountered in the genre. Take a Vow. It rocks!”
—Tara Janzen, New York Times bestselling
author of Loose and Easy
“An irresistible combination of romantic fantasy and reality that begins where our beloved romance novels end: TRUE VOWS. What a scrumptious slice of life!”
—Suzanne Forster, New York Times bestselling author
“The marriage of real-life stories with classic, fictional romance—an amazing concept.”
—Peggy Webb, award-winning author
of sixty romance novels
Julie Leto
HARD
TO
HOLD
Contents
Cover page
Praise for TRUE ROMANCE
Title page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Dedication
Dear Reader
Copyright
One
“YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT YOU’RE TOO PICKY.”
The blissful bubble built by Jeff Tweedy’s poignant lyrics and masterful acoustic guitar burst as if pricked with a pin. Anne Miller turned to her friend, Shane Sanders, and speared her with incredulous indignation. Just before the concert had started, Shane had been ruminating on all the reasons why Anne should not have been in Albany’s Egg theatre without a date. And now, a split second after the last bit of applause had died away, the discussion had popped up again like an earthworm.
“Drop it, Shane.”
Shane smiled, then rested her head on the shoulder of her latest boyfriend, James. Or was it Jamie? Jim? Anne wasn’t sure. Convinced she needed to expand her circle of friends, Anne usually tried harder to get to know new people. With Shane’s dates, however, she rarely had the chance to keep track.
Shane pursed her naturally pink lips and gave Anne a hard once-over. “You’re very attractive. Men notice you all the time. And you’re smart—probably smarter than you should be where guys are concerned. You’ve got a career, a great family, and wonderful taste in friends.”
“You should date me,” Anne quipped, before lowering her voice to add, “maybe then your relationships would last more than twenty-four hours.”
Shane sneered, but without any real malevolence. “You’re too messy. You’d drive me nuts. Seriously, sweetie, if you want a guy to share all your fabulosity with, you’re going to need to lower your standards.”
“My standards are just fine,” Anne said.
“Really? Then why is it that we sold that seat beside you rather than filling it with a guy you might get lucky with later on?”
“So you could spend the entire night trying to fix my love life, why else?”
Shane rolled her eyes at Anne’s sarcasm, but dropped the topic as they gathered their bags and coats. One of these days, Shane would come to the same realization as Anne that worrying about her social life—or worse, obsessing about it—was a lesson in futility.
If she was destined to meet someone, she would. Efforts on her part to make this happen sooner rather than later only resulted in frustration. A year ago, she’d bought an extra bedside table and had emptied drawers in her armoire in anticipation of meeting someone special. But the emotional feng shui had just left her with extra storage space—a fitting metaphor for her heart. And yet, for someone who rarely put things away, the act remained utterly useless.
“Don’t you feel the least bit anxious to meet someone interesting?”
“I meet interesting people every day,” Anne said. “And relationships happen when they happen. In the meantime, I’ll just leave the getting lucky part to you.”
The walk home to their State Street apartment building would be brisk, so Anne snuggled into her jacket with anticipation of the frigid November air. The crime desk had been especially brutal this week at the Albany Daily Journal and even the cold was preferable to air that had been recirculating inside a courthouse since the 1970s.
When Jamie suggested they stop for drinks on the way home, Anne agreed immediately. A couple of margaritas on a Monday night was a rare and wonderful treat.
Shane shuffled behind the line of music lovers moving toward the outer aisles. “What happened to you wanting to meet new people and broaden your horizons?”
Anne sighed. “And here I thought the promise of margaritas would deter you.”
“I just want you to be happy. You’ve been working like a maniac lately.”
“Crime doesn’t sleep, so neither do crime reporters.”
“Good thing, because if you’re any indication, crime reporters all sleep alone.”
Anne gave Shane a playful shove. “You’ve got a one-track mind. I love my job. I love exposing the dark underbelly of society and exploring the road to justice.”
“Too bad you don’t meet too many cute single guys on that road,” Shane said.
Anne winced. “My job is the last place I’d look for dates.”
Criminals notwithstanding, Anne did not want to date another reporter. For one, reporters on high-powered career tracks were fascinating, but they moved a lot—chasing down not only stories, but better jobs in bigger markets. She had her own aspirations in that arena and wasn’t quite certain she wanted to balance her professional goals against someone else’s. Not, at least, in the same industry.
The only other nonfelonious people she encountered in the workplace were overworked cops, underpaid prosecutors, bail bondsmen, and the downtrodden families of either victims or suspected criminals.
Not exactly a smorgasbord for potential mates.
Anne didn’t want to date just to get out of the house. She had friends for that, both male and female, and dabbling in casual dating had long ago lost her interest. She wasn’t exactly on a husband hunt, but she was done wasting her time on guys who had no intentions of settling down.
Okay, so maybe her standards were too high.
“If you’re not meeting guys at work and you won’t let me fix you up, then exactly how are you going to find the man of your dreams?”
“Dream men I have,” Anne said. “A little Jack Bauer, a little David Boreanaz, and my sleeping hours are covered.”
“That’s not how sleeping hours are supposed to be covered,” Shane replied, wiggling her eyebrows.
Maybe not, but Anne would rather fantasize about sexy men doing delicious, sexy things to her while she was asleep than waste any of her premium waking hours on a guy who didn’t float her boat.
Anne started to followed the people on her left toward the exit, but Shane grabbed her hand and tugged her to the right, following James. They filed into the open area that would lead them out of the auditorium. “Maybe over margaritas, I can convince you to go out with my cousin.”
“With tequila, you just might have a shot,” Anne said, though she doubted it. The last girl Shane’s cousin had dated had worked as a stripper. Somehow, she couldn�
�t imagine him finding her thick and naturally wavy dark hair, curvy figure, and cherry red–framed glasses appealing.
A break opened in the crowd. They were slipping through rather quickly when Shane stopped short, causing Anne to crash into her. She opened her mouth to apologize when Shane spun around, her light brown eyes bright with excitement. “Or, I could introduce you to Michael.”
Anne slapped her forehead. Keeping up with Shane’s unending list of single male relatives and cast-off guy friends, not to mention her train of thought, required more brain power than Anne possessed this late on a Monday night.
“Who’s Michael?”
Shane swung Anne around so that she bumped shoulders with a guy who’d been headed toward the same exit as they were.
A twinge of something warm reverberated through the lining of her jacket.
Something like attraction.
“I’m Michael,” said the guy she’d crashed into.
Anne stepped backward, nearly trampling over a couple of girls who looked way too young to be out on a weeknight. She mumbled her apologies while her gaze connected with the most intense blue eyes she’d ever seen.
The grin that reached into their turquoise depths wasn’t bad, either.
“This is Anne,” Shane said, practically bouncing on her toes with excitement. “She lives in my building. Isn’t she beautiful?”
There was a special place in hell for people who insisted on fixing up their friends—a place only slightly less horrifying than the dungeons reserved for those who sprang arresting-looking guys on their neighbors with no advance notice. Anne forced a laugh over her clumsiness. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to run you over.”
Michael dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket, his grin lighting his eyes to a color that was almost hard to look at. “The experience wasn’t entirely unpleasant. How’d you like the concert? And yes,” he said to Shane. “Yes, she is.”
Not unpleasant wasn’t the best compliment she’d ever gotten, but how he handled Shane’s audacious question put her on notice. That he’d agreed she was beautiful was special. That he’d done so with such smooth skill impressed her even more.
Since they’d stopped to talk, a bottleneck of people surged behind them, pressing them forward through the exit. Despite the chaos all around, Anne answered Michael’s question about the concert. By the time they spilled into the lobby of the Egg, they both agreed that Tweedy had been on form and worth the ticket price.
They’d moved on to her explaining how she and Shane lived in the same apartment building not far from the venue when Anne asked, “So how do you know Shane?”
Michael and her neighbor exchanged a quick but meaningful look.
“Oh,” she said.
“What do you mean by that Oh?” Shane jerked up the zipper of her coat against a sudden gust of wind coming in from outside the auditorium.
Anne glanced at Michael, who looked a little perplexed, an expression that added a dash of adorability to his attractive face.
She’d assumed that Shane and Michael had dated sometime and though the odds had been with her, she was, apparently, mistaken. She covered with, “Did you go to school together?”
The moment brimmed with a layer of tension, but Michael tilted his head in the direction of the moving crowd and answered, “Actually, we met at a concert. She hooked up with a friend of mine.”
Anne smiled. “She has the tendency to do that.”
Michael laughed. “Pretty girls often do, but then you’d know all about that.”
It took a split second before she realized he’d just paid her another compliment, though this one was definitely better than the first.
“Did you just call me pretty?”
From the indentation in his cheek, she could tell he was trying hard to waylay a smile. “You sound shocked.”
“I guess I am,” she confessed.
“I can’t imagine why.”
Though a blast of cold air swirled around them as they poured outside into the open, Anne had to admit—if only to herself— that this guy was good. In the course of a very short conversation, he’d warmed her insides like a strong, hot toddy.
“Hey, let’s go to Bomber’s. They make that Italian margarita,” Shane said, “and they’re on the way home.”
Anne cast a sideways glance at Michael and realized he was not alone. Flanked by a tall, slim guy with dark brown hair, they shared a comfortable rapport that told Anne they’d been friends a long time.
“Hi, I’m Anne,” she said, holding out her hand.
He accepted. “Ben,” he said.
“Did you date Shane, too?”
Shane bopped her on her shoulder. “You’re going to give Jamie the wrong idea about me.”
“He probably has the wrong idea about you already or he wouldn’t be so anxious to get you tipsy on tequila,” Anne suggested.
This comment initiated a squeal of protest from Shane. Several bawdy jokes then erupted from Jamie. After Ben joined in, Anne fell back a few paces and walked beside Michael again, who was tucking something into his pocket.
“Going to your car?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Ben has a house a couple of blocks from here.”
“You’re roommates?”
“If you call camping out in someone’s attic being a roommate. I just moved back to Albany after a stint in Portland. A leasing agent found me a place, but I haven’t seen it yet. It isn’t easy finding an apartment that takes dogs.”
“You have more than one?”
The question lit Michael’s face as if a spotlight had just been turned toward him. “No, just one, but she’s a beauty.”
And with only a little bit of prodding, Anne had him talking about his pooch, a Weimaraner named Sirus, which he clearly adored. Anne couldn’t help but think there was nothing more appealing than a man who loved his dog. In fact, the more he spoke about chew toys and his dog’s predilection for pancake batter, the more Anne wondered if, for once, her unnatural ability to bump into things hadn’t worked in her favor.
They reached Bomber’s Bar five minutes later. Patrons mingled outside, waiting for space in the crowded pub. Jamie and Shane headed inside to look for a table, but Ben waited by the door for Anne and Mike, whose conversation kept them a few steps behind.
“So how do you feel about margaritas?” Anne asked.
“More of a beer guy myself, but I’ve been known to toss back tequila for a good cause.”
“It’s Monday night,” Anne said, a little more brightly than she wanted to. The sudden, anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach was only slightly more disconcerting than the flush currently burning her cheeks. “That’s reason enough in my book.”
Mike shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, bringing his forward momentum to a screeching halt.
“Aren’t you coming in for a drink?” she asked.
He gave a big sniff, his eyes glassy from the sharp, night air. “I can’t, but thanks.”
She didn’t try to hide her confusion. She didn’t exactly expect the guy to drop down on one knee after talking to her for fifteen minutes, but his reluctance to join them for a drink took her by surprise. Geez, her radar was really off. She could have sworn he had at least a passing interest in being friendly.
“More margaritas for me, I guess,” she said, moving toward the door.
When he called her name, she turned, gasping as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a quick hug.
And by quick, she meant quick. They made contact for less than a split second, and yet in that fleeting moment, heat suffused from his body to hers. The only reason she registered the warmth was because she missed it the moment he was gone.
“It was really great to meet you,” he said.
“Yeah, you too,” she replied.
She exchanged a smile with his friend Ben, who looked equally confused by Mike’s refusal to come inside, then shoved through the crowd to catch up with Shane
and Jamie. And here she thought she was starting off the week with an interesting prospect. Instead, she’d just gotten a hug from a guy who obviously didn’t want to give her the time of day.
Two
“YOU’RE AN IDIOT.”
Michael Davoli glanced at Ben and tried to come up with a sharp or clever retort. Unfortunately, nothing came to him. He’d just walked away from a chance to hang out with a vivacious goddess of a girl just because his nose was runny, his eyes were itchy and blinking with even more rapidity than usual. Idiot described him perfectly.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Michael muttered.
Ben took the invitation with relish. “Where to start? That chick was into you, man.”
“Maybe,” he said, not entirely certain. She was certain friendly and bubbly, but for all he knew, she was that way with everyone. Which, in a significant way, made her all that more appealing.
“She was cute,” Ben said.
“Definitely.”
“So why are we walking in the wrong direction?”
Mike pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. The action covered the insistent twitch in his neck and shoulder.
Damned allergies. Damned Tourette’s. His condition only worsened when his immunities were down. He’d suffered through the concert on massive doses of antihistamine, which he’d counteracted with two triple espressos and his strong will to hear Tweedy play. The music had, as usual, given him an outlet for the pent-up energy spawned by his disorder. And he’d met a hot girl whose curves, even beneath a bulky winter coat, had invoked a completely different kind of energy—the best kind.
But he was on the downside of his caffeine high and not only did he not want to sneeze all over Shane, her new squeeze, or the pretty, vivacious Anne while they sipped tequila and lime, he also didn’t want his meds to cause him to pass out in front of a girl he wanted to impress.
“Man, I feel like shit,” Mike admitted. “Maybe another time.”
Ben shook his head and muttered under his breath. Though Michael should have known better than to invite further conversation on the matter, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “What?”